Hancock County farmer served as township trustee

FINDLAY - James E. Oman, 62, a farmer who was a 20-year trustee of Hancock County's Marion Township and served on the county's regional planning body, died Monday in the Blanchard Valley Regional Health Center of heart problems.

Mr. Oman raised corn and soybeans on his farm. He also was a courier for several years at the Blanchard Valley medical complex.

He became a township trustee in the 1980s, and was re-elected thereafter. The day he was released from the hospital this summer, he made a point of going to the county fair so he could sit in the Marion Township booth, said his brother, Steve, a former Hancock County commissioner.

"He served the township well," his brother said.

The brothers spoke most days.

"It was funny. I looked at government from the county perspective," his brother said. "And he looked at it from the township perspective. Jim was a strong believer that township government was the most efficient form of government. And he'd tell you, too."

Mr. Oman was township association representative to the Hancock County Regional Planning Commission. He was a president of the Hancock County Farm Bureau in the 1980s and remained a member.

He grew up in Hancock County's Eagle Township and was a 1961 graduate of Cory-Rawson High School.

He put in a vegetable garden every year and left tomatoes, squash, and other produce on the front porches of many relatives.

Services will be at 10 a.m. today in the Coldren-Crates Mortuary, Findlay.

The family suggests tributes to St. Paul's United Methodist Church, of which he was a third-generation member.

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